A follow-up to this story: NOAA Whistleblower: Climate Data Was Manipulated, the Computers Used "Suffered a Complete Failure"
Top Republicans on the House science committee claim a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist “confirmed” that his NOAA colleagues “manipulated” climate data for a 2015 study. But that scientist denies that he accused NOAA of manipulating data.
Rep. Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and two subcommittee chairmen issued a Feb. 5 press release — “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records” — as part of an ongoing dispute over the validity of a paper published in the journal Science in June 2015 by NOAA scientists.
[...] But in interviews with the Associated Press and E&E, an online energy and environmental news outlet, Bates said he had not accused his colleagues of data manipulation.
Bates told the AP on Feb. 6 that there was “no data tampering, no data changing, nothing malicious” involved with his colleagues’ study. “It’s not trumped up data in any way shape or form,” he said.
Rather, Bates claimed Karl and his group hadn’t followed NOAA protocol in “the way data was handled, documented and stored, raising issues of transparency and availability,” the AP reported.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 11 2017, @09:26PM
why are republicans so against the thought of climate change, anyway?
the bible said something about humans being the stewards of the earth, and so many christians vote republican that I really dont understand why the regular people that are faithful will vote for these guys.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 11 2017, @09:51PM
I am more surprised how easily people accept that climate researchers know what is going on. At least the attempts to explain it to the public are very poor. For example,
1) Assume the Earth was a zero-dimensional object[...] therefore there is a greenhouse effect of 33K
2) It is a coincidence that the temperature at 1 atm pressure in the Venus atmosphere is the same as on Earth once adjusted for distance from the sun, despite having 96.5/0.04 ~ 2500x more CO2.
3) We can measure changes in average temperature of less than a degree, but only after byzantine adjustments and fixes to the data, eg:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00006.1 [ametsoc.org]
From the information I have seen, it is just is not something easy to believe that they understand the effects of adding CO2 on the climate. Like most, at first I relied on argument from authority heuristic, but once I looked into it a bit...
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday February 11 2017, @10:20PM
It is a coincidence that the temperature at 1 atm pressure in the Venus atmosphere is the same as on Earth once adjusted for distance from the sun, despite having 96.5/0.04 ~ 2500x more CO2.
As I mentioned when this point was made in another thread, Venus has heavy clouds which extend higher than that altitude.
/comments.pl?sid=17916&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=improvedthreaded&cid=465303#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
From the information I have seen, it is just is not something easy to believe that they understand the effects of adding CO2 on the climate.
Do you believe that it has little or no effect? Your remark about Venus suggests that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 11 2017, @10:39PM
What are you concluding from the clouds? I am aware of them. I think if the high CO2 atmosphere is warming Venus, then it must be that the albedo rose (in the form of these clouds) to maintain radiative equilibrium. Likewise, I would expect some aspect of the Earth climate to change in response to an increase in CO2 (be it albedo, heat capacity of the surface, etc) to maintain equilibrium.
That actually brings me to another poor aspect of how this theory is presented to the public. As part of that 0-dimensional model of a planet with no atmosphere, they use a value for albedo that is due to Earth's clouds. With no atmosphere, there would be no clouds. These types of illogical explanations leave a very poor impression on me.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Saturday February 11 2017, @11:42PM
What are you concluding from the clouds?
I'd expect them to reflect incoming sunlight and also reflect light coming from below. The former effect would tend to lower the temperature within or below the clouds, but the latter effect would tend to raise it. In the other thread I didn't consider the latter effect.
I think if the high CO2 atmosphere is warming Venus, then it must be that the albedo rose (in the form of these clouds) to maintain radiative equilibrium.
That sounds plausible. The post in the other thread stated that "it's the pressure," i.e. the composition of the atmospheres does not affect temperature.
[...] how this theory is presented to the public. As part of that 0-dimensional model of a planet with no atmosphere [...]
This sounds familiar. Is it a critique of the American Chemical Society's Climate Science Toolkit pages?
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience.html [acs.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 12 2017, @12:04AM
Yes, Venus is very hot at the surface because the atmosphere is very thick (as indicated by the pressure).
It is everywhere, it is almost the first thing you read when trying to understand the greenhouse effect, eg:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/recipe-for-climate-change/ [ucsd.edu]
https://www.amazon.com/Global-Warming-Understanding-David-Archer/dp/1405140399 [amazon.com]
--https://maths.ucd.ie/met/cess/FoundClim/archer_global_warming.pdf[chapter 2]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 12 2017, @12:09AM
Here it is again:
Hansen, J, Johnson D, Lacis A, Lebedeff S, Lee P, Rind D & Russell G, “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide”,Science, Vol 213, n 4511, pp 957 – 966, August 28, 1981. http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~davidc/ATMS211/articles_optional/Hansen81_CO2_Impact.pdf [washington.edu]
(Score: 2) by https on Sunday February 12 2017, @06:19AM
You should read this basic primer on why the simple adjustments you mock as byzantine must be made. It is not that complicated: different types of measuring devices have predictably different kinds of bias [arstechnica.com].
Actually Mr. Trump, anyone who wants to understand why your whole post is woo-woo bullshit should read the ars piece. I'm sorry that you think scientists being precise in their presentation and using math you can't follow yourself means they should be ignored.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 12 2017, @09:19AM
I never said it didn't need to be done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 12 2017, @07:53PM
Reread that excerpt about the (I agree, totally necessary) adjustments. The idea the final numbers are accurate to within more than a few K seems insane.